seronegative arthritis

[bakingD]

Hi everyone

I feel very sad that for 5 years have been on steroids and now it looks like I have seronegative arthritis with massively damaged knee and had op to tidy up cartilage and remove bone spur but still having trouble with pain swelling and my other knee too has started to hurt- o

It could be I had seroneg from the start but it felt like PMR so didn’t want to start methotrexate at that time but am nnow beating myself up about whether if I had it might have prevented joint damage

Have only had 2 doses of methotrexate am hoping it might help- guess it could still gone PMR but wanted to reach out to you lovely lot for some support as feel v upset

[PMRpro Ambassador]

Hard luck - LORA can start looking identical to PMR and there are no reliable features to differentiate them until the erosion starts though often patients either don't react particularly quickly to the pred or they really struggle to reduce pred. Last time we looked at my knee there was no sign of anything untoward so even after all this time and problems getting pred lower mine appears not to be inflammatory arthritis.

Hope the knee improves - anything with legs/feet affects EVERYTHING doesn't it?

[bakingD in reply to PMRpro]

Thanks for all your input over the years too!!glad yours has stayed at Pmr

[Maisie1958]

Good morning    bakingD . Apologies for late reply and so sorry you are feeling sad. Please don’t be upset that you didn’t start MTX earlier. Like you and quite a number of others, my PMR diagnosis was changed to seronegative inflammatory arthritis and reluctantly started on MTX nearly two years ago. I’ve been off Pred over a year now ( was on low dose Pred for 7 years) and feeling very well on 12.5mg MTX weekly so l hope it works for you. I still think my PMR diagnosis was spot on at the start (even now I still think more pmr than LORA, no erosions on many images) and it was only late in the day that both my knees started to hurt. My sympathy to you, painful knees are very miserable. Perhaps I should have taken more note of my newly achy wrists /ankles a couple of years in but hindsight is a great thing and a tiny increase in Pred sorted those. I guess we all need to be more proactive if things don’t feel right for us or change. Anyway please don’t beat yourself up and I hope MTX does the job- if not there are plenty of other drugs to try. I flit between here and the RA forum on HU. They are a nice bunch too. All good wishes.

[bakingD in reply to Maisie1958]

Hi Maisie

It was so kind of you to answer and it has made me feel a lot better about my illness and also that you managed to get off Pred after 7 years is so reassuring - hope you continue to make progress

Early days for me and it’s good to know am not alone!!